I know this is going to hurt but here goes.
How about letting cruisers mount gunboat turrets much like gunboats can mount transport turrets. Anyone who did it would weaken their ships, but would make some interesting support ship setups.
Varyag
Cruisers don't need gunboat turrets in my opinion. Try Solaris turrets if you are fond of fire rate.
i can already give you one reason why this wont work
CERBERUS SPAMMING WILL GET WORSE
I am not sure that spamming gun boat cerberus turrets would give you anything to be happy about. They are still way less efficient than all standard cruiser turrets.
Most capital ships have a variety of calibers of every day guns. I was thinking more along the lines of getting more variety on setups and the use of close support weapons. Anyone who spammed Cerbs would seriously cripple their ship's firepower.
This wouldn't be about increasing or decreasing effectiveness, just more originality and creativity involving setups.
I think the problem is the way the guns are setup power wise for there intended ship type. Crusier guns (turrets excluding Razors and other exotic weps) on average do slightly more damage than gunboat versions, there is a difference but not that dramatic.But power wise gunboat weps use alot less of what cruiser weps use. Now you throw 12 or so gunboat turrets on a cruiser with a power core that is 3x (approx) more powerful than a gunboat and you will have basically a double gunboat in a single ship. It would be the uber ship of the mod, except for a battleship with gunboat turrets, only difference is more hull/power. I'd love to have a cruiser with gunboat weps, but think that would upset the apple cart in a big way.
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The above argument is void. That's like saying a gunboat is basically a double transport.
It would be as if you couldn't mount level 9 guns on level 10 slots on a fighter or something. Level 9s are more efficient, sure, but they do LESS DAMAGE PER SECOND. When looking at the effectiveness of a gun, you look at damage/second, derived from damage/shot * shots/second; and damage/1 energy, derived from damage/shot * (energy/shot)^-1.
In SP, for example, when you're sitting there on the tail of a gunboat for 30 seconds plus, dodging fighters shooting at you, while trying to take it down, damage/energy is important. But when your energy bar is full most of the time, it's not.
Now give me a situation where a cruiser would be chasing something bigger than itself, where it'd be a similar scenario to fighter-chasing-gunship. Let's say a battleship, or even a Destroyer. Does the cruiser's damage/energy even really matter now? The battleship will shred it with superior damage/second.
TLDR? All for the flexibility in loadout because shot efficiency doesn't matter that much on a cruiser. A cruiser with all GB Cerbs will get shredded by a cruiser with cruiser guns, simply because they do more damage, regardless of efficiency.
It is true that gunboat weapons are marginally more efficient, but with a load of the best cruiser guns (basic and defense) you never run out of power anyway. The whole reason for my idea is having close support weapons that match you affiliation.
I use rhein guns on the Varyag because it is a Rhein ship even though Basic turrets would be slightly more effective vs. other caps. I would like some smaller GB weapons to show a secondary battery for lighter stuff like gunboats and bombers. I think that rhein gunboat weapons would be the best representation of this. I don't think it would affect balance because it would actually cripple your ship from fighting in its class.
After almost losing my RM characters rhienland cruiser to a lux liner with a full load out of 'normal' rheinland gunboat turrets...
Forget it.
New cruiser turrets for close in defence, fine, mounting gunboat turrets on other ships, not fine.
Yes you're right, a full load of gunboat cerbs on a cruiser cripples that cruiser against other cruisers.
But you're getting (depending on the ship) almost double the number of gunboat turrets, you can fire them all for alot longer then a gunboat could manage firing half as many, so how the hell can you not see that people will go gunboat hunting in cruisers fitted with gunboat turrets?
Hell, I'd hate to have to fly past a cruiser with full gunboat cerbs in another cruiser, let alone try taking one on in a bomber or get attacked by one when I'm in a fighter.
Sorry, it's not gonna happen.
As for gunboats mounting transport turrets, screenshot it and do a sanction report becuase as far as I'm concerned that OoRP.
Well i mounted a few transport turrets(even some figher turrets) on my Junker GB, feelt great, nice and junky and well within RP... you gain no advantage by mounting transport turrets on a gunboat...
It matters though when you mount cerebrus turrets on a battlecruiser for example, had a chance to take one with my battleship and had a real hard time against this bountyhunter... i mostly won for strategic resons, (having fighter support and such) the problem comes all from bizare energy requirements for diffrent ship classes... while higher class hardly do more dmg than lower class turrets, their power consumption is somewhat higher.
If power consumption wouldn't be connected to ship class, then there wouldn't be a problem like this... and mounting gunboat cerebs on your cruiser wouldn't give you an unfair advantage...
I would go as far as adding one lvl 10 turret to gunboat, and a few to cruisers, changing lvl 10 turrets to be anti capital, lvl 8 anti fighter and lvl 9 somewhere in the middle...
the problem with the thought is - that the smaller the ship, the more efficient the guns, sort of. - a fighter inferno does huge damage for like no energy at all ( compared to the damage ). - a battleship inferno however does no damage compared to its energy use.
if a cruiser could load up gunboat turrets, - the cruiser could load like 12 gunboat battlerazors.... and fire them. ( remember, battlecruisers are cruisers, too )
if you apply it to battleships, too - a battleship could prolly equip 16 light mortars.